**** NOTE: Submission Deadline is May 1st, 2007 ****

                          CALL FOR PAPERS
                                Special Issue on
Personalizing Real and Virtual Explorations of Cultural Heritage

                User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction:
                  The Journal of Personalization Research
              (an international journal published by Springer Verlag)


BACKGROUND:

Physical environments such as museums and historical sites
can now benefit from mobile technology that enhances visitors'
experience through augmented reality.
On the other hand, digital collections are also changing;
museums and archives are digitizing their material both
to preserve and widen user access. This in turn leads to the
creation of virtual exhibitions where physically dispersed
objects are virtually co-located and interconnected.

The combination of mobile technology and digital collections holds
great potential for improving museum visits, and the exploration of
cultural heritage in general. However, users can face
difficulties finding relevant content for their visits among the
plethora of information now on offer.

Personalization has been recently proposed as a way to:

- reduce the information space to the relevant content,
 (e.g., by selecting among the many information sources those
 that are of interest to the specific user, whether they are
 casual tourists or scholars);

- contextualize the selected content to the object in focus
 and/or the current visit (e.g., by taking previously seen and/or
 related objects located elsewhere into account);

- harmonize online and physical visits by ensuring the seamless
 migration of personalization (e.g., a personalized physical tour
 is generated on the basis of a previous virtual visit).

To encourage researchers to report on established results of their
research in this area, we are calling for contributions to a special
issue of User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction: The Journal of
Personalization Research published by Springer
(UMUAI: http://umuai.informatik.uni-essen.de/).
CALL FOR PAPERS:

We will consider original contributions devoted to User Modeling
and User-Adaptive Systems in the field of real and
virtual explorations of cultural heritage.
We solicit papers that address theoretical issues and innovative applications:

- Theoretical papers should present novel and evaluated
 techniques and formalisms, or empirical studies relevant to
 adaptivity in cultural heritage.

- Application papers should describe implemented and evaluated systems
 that personalize visits to a virtual or physical cultural heritage site,
 focusing on the innovative aspects of the system.


Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

- user modeling and content adaptation techniques for personalizing
 cultural heritage;
- context-aware and personalized museum guides for individuals and groups;
- adaptation of content and presentation across media and devices;
- metadata acquisition, cataloguing and archival techniques supporting
 personalization of cultural heritage;
- personalizing virtual visits to 3D cultural heritage content;
- multi-modal interaction with cultural heritage in 3D environments;
- bridging digital collections and physical museums for
 interactive learning;
- mobile and nomadic adaptive applications to inside or open-air
 visit experience;
- the semantic web and Web 2.0 perspective on personalized
 cultural heritage;



HOW TO SUBMIT:

Potential authors should send a tentative title and a 500 word
abstract two months before the paper submission deadline
to both guest editors
(Liliana Ardissono, email: liliana@di.unito.it, and
Daniela Petrelli, email: d.petrelli@shef.ac.uk).

Authors will receive feedback within 15 days.
Paper allowed proceeding will be submitted to the
rigorous UMUAI peer review process.

Submissions to the special issue should follow the UMUAI submission
instructions which can be obtained from: http://www.umuai.org

Electronic submissions are preferred.  Each submission should
specify that it is intended for the Special Issue on
"Personalizing Real and Virtual Explorations of Cultural Heritage".

We recommend that papers not exceed 40 pages
(including figures and references);
authors should consult the guest editors of the issue
if they feel that they need additional space.


REVIEW PROCESS:

Submissions will undergo the normal UMUAI review process,
and will be reviewed by three established researchers selected
from a panel of reviewers formed for the special issue.
Barring unforeseen problems, authors can expect to be notified regarding
the review results within 2-3 months of submission.


IMPORTANT DATES:

March 1st, 2007     Submit title and abstract to guest editors
March 16th, 2007    Feedback to authors
May 1st, 2007       Deadline for submission of full papers
August 1st, 2007    Notice of review results

Please address any questions to the guest editors:

Liliana Ardissono                          Daniela Petrelli
Dipartimento di Informatica      Department of Information Studies
Universita` di Torino                    University of Sheffield
Corso Svizzera 185                        Regent Court - 211 Portobello Street
10149 Torino                                  Sheffield S1 4DP
Italy                                                  UK
liliana@di.unito.it                         d.petrelli@shef.ac.uk